Confession: I don't like my difficult child's girlfriend, at all

[SuZir]

Some of you may remember that I don't have the most amiable relationship with my mother in law. I have always vowed I would never get between my sons and their SOs like she has done. And that I would do my best to like them and have a friendly relationships with them. But no one told me it would be so darned hard!

Okay, difficult child's girlfriend is a easy child, popular, pretty, smart enough, full time college student with okay grades, has a part time job and nice hobbies. She is out of his league in many ways so to say. So far, so good. But I simply don't like her. She is somewhat shallow, very onto her looks and trendy, I don't think she would had looked difficult child twice if difficult child wasn't an athlete. She tries to change difficult child (some of it I wholeheartedly approve, it really is okay to have a hair cut more often than twice a year and it is good for him to try to be more social, but some... ehh, not so much), to me it seems that she wanted herself a jock boyfriend (like many her friends) and only thing that is right in difficult child for her is that he is indeed an athlete. There are this stereotype of how athletes in difficult child's sport should be and to me it feels like she tries to change difficult child to that. I can already tell that it will not happen but the process will likely make them both very unhappy.

She also has a problem with difficult child's ethnic background, she doesn't like our culture, she doesn't like it when we talk our first language (and she really showed it during the Christmas and has showed before.) She used some rather offending stereotypes of us to our face, even to difficult child's grandparents and before I have heard her use even very derogatory language about us. Over time we could win her over, our culture does have some characteristics she would like and her prejudice is typical for people from her necks of woods. So she may grow out of it. But still I don't like it at all. Especially if they end up with kids some day. I would really hate it, if she wouldn't allow us to speak our language to our grands etc. She wouldn't be a first. With the kids there is also a fact that she certainly isn't at her best at crisis. If she ever gives birth to my difficult child's kids and they inherit even one gene from him, she better learn and fast. And of course there it at least that one time I know she has been violent with difficult child. That is bad on it's own, but what if she does that with a small kid too?

And while she is not saying "ain't" I can't help but feel disappointed with her lack of intellect and even more so intellectual curiosity, interest for knowledge and world. She doesn't read much (if she doesn't have to), she doesn't follow news, she doesn't care much about things around her. She simply doesn't have that curiosity. While she is smart enough to do okay at school, she simply lacks that sharpness and .. well something. She is a bore. And I know I'm shallow and unfair to even thinking that. Oh, and her parents, they are terribly close minded and 'uppity' and I fear she will turn like them when she grows up.

I do console myself with a fact that it is unlikely that their relationship will last. But I really fear how I will be able to handle it if it does. They didn't get engaged at 12.12.12 as I feared (even if in our culture engagement and weddings are two very separate matters, usually separated by years) but apparently she would had liked to and has been angry when difficult child didn't propose. difficult child says he didn't because his team mates would had laughed at him and teased him, apparently I wasn't an only one who thought their engagement would be likely and totally childish, cliché and stupid in that day. Of course that is very childish reason not to propose, but then again, if you are that childish, you have no business thinking of marriage. Then again, difficult child told me that they have already decided the names of their future children. Though they did give the best girl's name to their puppy, because it wouldn't be funky any more in five to ten years when they do plan to have kids. It is a very cute name - for a puppy, I'm thankful my granddaughter will not have that name.

I told difficult child that I was happy they have decided to wait till his girlfriend is done with school and has some work experience (as I said, she is a easy child), because at that time I probably will not have the urge to go to local bar, drink my brains out, dance at tables and ask every drunkard there that "I don't look like a granny, don't I?" and throw a fit how I'm too young to be a granny and demand that my grandchild would call me with my first name. So their decision to wait saves our family from some serious embarrassment. He found that amusing. I certainly hope they are not changing their baby plans in any time near future (well, except those names...)

I'm rambling again. But I really dread that against the odds they are together still ten years from now and making those babies. I can't promise you I would do much better than mother in law...

 

[JJJ]

My boys have had their kids names picked out for years......I am just glad Tigger no longer favors Pikachu for a girl.

Like you, I doubt it will last. difficult child will be difficult child and she will realize that she can't change him. I use to work with pro athletes and we'd see that a lot , girls who were a step above groupies but still would have been gone in an instant if the player had a career ending injury. We were nice to every one of them but it wasn't hard to tell the difference between the women who loved the man, and the girl that Craved the athlete.

 

[DDD]

I've been there done that. Really it was painful for me. Yeah, sounds silly, but I raised a wonderful easy child who became the object of a girl's affection in college. I totally "knew" she would do anything and everything to become his wife. Sigh! She allegedly was on birth control. I freely encouraged him to use protection. They ended up getting married eight months before my first grandson was born. I followed Emily Post and invited her parents for dinner at our home. Yikes! They were not horrible people but different from us. Her Mother actually said "I told X that she really made a great catch." WTH! I will never ever ever understand how they have remained married. It has been one of life's biggest disappointments. My other easy child stepson ended up having a son "unexpectedly" when an older RN who loved his "hippie lifestyle" accidentally got pregnant. Yeah...right...you are almost thirty and you don't understand birth control?? Now my easy child/difficult child (a/k/a difficult child#1) is in love with a woman almost ten years older than he. I'm killing myself with self discipline, lol. The trait that drives me nuts LOL is that she always says "ain't". OMG. I am doing my penance on earth. I understand and am sending supportive hugs. DDD

 

[BusynMember]

It really hoovers. I couldn't stand my son's now ex wife, but he was married to her for ten years. She treated us like dirt and he stuck up for her because "I have to. She's my wife." You really can't do anything about it either. I tried to sort of gently warn him before they tied the knot, but it didn't work. They ran off and eloped then had my grandson who is a huge difficult child as are both of them. As for her family: they were not very classy, but they had money. In the US, that alone can buy you class. Her mother had a breathalyzer in her car because she had had too many drink/drive tickets. But her father was rich and he paid her a lot of money to work for him. This family would ignore us anytime we were in the same room as them, which was as seldom as possible. I'm secretly and meanly happy she left my son.

You have my sympathy. I hope he dumps her or she gets tired of him before a kid comes into the picture.

 

[DammitJanet]

Ahhhhh, the glory of being a mother in law.

 

[Hound dog]

I didn't like any of my son in laws at first.

M.......well, that hasn't changed. lol

easy child's husband I didn't like because he was loud and rude and thought his insults were hilarious. I'll be honest, I couldn't stand the sight of him for a very long time. But I while I couldn't for the life of me figure out why on earth easy child was attracted to him, I also knew there had to be some good there somewhere or she wouldn't have been. So I kept right on trying. We taught him manners. We taught him not to be so loud. And eventually we cured him of the insults that he thought were so funny but were anything but. Along the way I got to see why easy child fell in love with him. Under all that is a good man, a good dad. He does still have to work on his short fuse temper though and anger issues. Now I love him like a son, but it had to grow into that.

Nichole's husband......omg talk about a class A difficult child! Mr Drama King himself. Thrived on it, created it if there was none to feed off of. Took forever to get him away from that behavior. He's still gfgish in several areas but again, I grew to love him over time. He has some really good qualities. I have to laugh because in many ways Nichole married her Dad. lmao

When either of these son in laws drove me nuts or peeved me off, I had to remind myself that my girls loved them.......so there had to be good reasons for that. So I searched for them, observed until I found them. Then I could begin to like them and later grow to love them.

 

[SuZir]

It's good to know I'm not alone. I do get that I can't influence to with whom my sons will share their lives or marry. I also know that my best chance is trying to just get along with their SOs, even if it is hard. I will certainly not tell or show to difficult child that I don't like her girlfriend and even less I will show it to her. I know that I can only loose if I show my distaste for her.

She is not a bad girl, neither are her parents bad folk. girlfriend has had some good influence to difficult child and her parents are nice to him. I should be happy for that and I am. They are just... Well my granny would had said upstart, but it is of course mean to think that.

I just hope they don't last till starting the family part. And not only because of the baby names With those I have hopes they would change many times before actual babies. I'm also more than happy they are taking things slow in that part. They have now known each other close to two years, officially been together year and half and living together little over half a year now. No babies and no marriages in some time yet is very high on my wish list.

Janet: If I remember correctly also your sons are big guys? I think that has a lot to do with not caring much about physical abuse. They are not scared of their much smaller women and are too machos to admit even themselves that emotional side of it hurts. My problem with that is, that one time there may be something in the hand when they hit and scissors stabbed to someone or heavy object thrown to someone will cause just as much damage if the one doing it is much smaller. Or that the guy is provoked enough to hit back and then they are the bad guy, even if the damage is not any worse than other way around and even if that was a first time and woman has hit many times before. And then there are of course children. Just seeing domestic violence is very damaging to kids. And kids don't understand that dad is much bigger than mom and unlikely to get badly hurt if she is using just her hands. For them both mom and dad are big, much bigger than they are. And of course if person is violent to their spouse, I see a risk to be violent with kids to be high.

 

[pasajes4]

My 34 year old son has a 10 year old daughter that he is raising on his own. He met the mother at a party when he was 24 and still a bit of a difficult child drifting from job to job and using drugs from time to time. One month later he tells me she is preggers and they are getting married. She was lazy, had a nasty temper, ignored the daughter, I could go on. My son cleaned up his act and went back to school so that he could provide for his daughter. He worked his butt off to get into college. He had huge obstacles to overcome. He is now an RN. While he was going to school, working, cleaning house, taking care of his daughter and trying to be a good husband to her, she was online having an affair with some guy in another state. She left him last year to go live with this guy. Here is the real kicker...the child is not my sons. She was preggers when they met. She told him this in a nasty note when she left taking all of the money and anything else of value with her. I helped him with the courts and laweyer to secure custody of the child. He loves his daughter and is a great father to her.

It was a horrible relationship, but it was what got him to become who he is today. One day maybe I will get a chance to thank her.

 

[muttmeister]

Both of my boys married girls I didn't like. I made the best of it. Now they are both divorced. I think I am old enough to have some perspecive on this. First of all, you don't have any real control over who your kids marry (and probably you shouldn't - I shudder to think who my parents would have picked out for me- LOL). If your difficult child is like most, the best you can do is be really nice to the girl and make him think you love her dearly (for 2 reasons). First of all, if he does marry her, you will not start out with bad feelings and he will have nothing bad to say about how you feel about her. Second, usually the better you like them, the less interested difficult children become.
We raise our difficult children the best we can. LIke all kids, sometimes they make good choices and sometimes they make bad ones but by the time they are old enought to marry, we have very little say over what they do. We can either accept them and their significant others or we can cut off all contact. I've opted for the first choice.
I used to have a friend who said, everytime she spent time with her son's wife she would go home and stick her head in the toilet and scream for half an hour. It let her get out her frustrations without letting anybody know how she felt. Seems like a reasonable reaction.

 

[DammitJanet]

Thats good.

 

[TerryJ2]

Oh, dear. I am so sorry about the racial issues. You'd think in this day and age that would be over, but clearly, it's not.

Fingers crossed that the relationship doesn't last ... and that she doesn't get pregnant.

 

[SuZir]

Oh, dear. I am so sorry about the racial issues. You'd think in this day and age that would be over, but clearly, it's not.

Fingers crossed that the relationship doesn't last ... and that she doesn't get pregnant.

Not racial issue but ethnicity issue, we are same race but different cultural and language group. And Europe is not as politically correct with these as you, especially when it comes to those near us. And especially those who can't really claim to be severely disadvantaged minority.

One thing I do have faith with is that they are responsible with contraception. That is a huge relief. And it isn't at all trendy to be teen/young mother here, so I do believe babies are not in their plans in few years. And if they are still together five or six years from now and want to have a baby, I think it is better that I just try to adjust. And hope that also girlfriend has matured. Which of course would be likely, she is only two months older than difficult child and while boys are slower to grow and difficult child especially so, also girls do have some maturing ahead in that age. And she does have also good characteristics, so if it comes to that, I have to learn to concentrate on that.

But yeah, I do hope that the likeliest happens and they will break up some time during the next two or three years.

 

[SuZir]

One more thing I'm not fond with how she expresses herself in social media. I'm not her Facebook friend but can see some through being difficult child's friend. I don't usually look except the comments she makes to difficult child's posts, but my sister-in-law just asked me yesterday if I had noticed something and I went looking. sister in law was right, there is being funny, there is being ironic or sassy and there is teasing your SO. And then there is being nasty and derogative and taking your private matters public and embarrassing your SO. And not even taking care your SO's mother or godmother or boss is not able to see that, is still another matter. Stupid, out of line, not classy at all.

 

[InsaneCdn]

SuZir, to make matters either worse or better... they are still "teenagers". Give them another 5 years or so, and it's really hard to tell what she'll be like. Better, or worse. Too bad we can't fast-forward through some of these "hurry up and mature" years!

 

[SuZir]

SuZir, to make matters either worse or better... they are still "teenagers". Give them another 5 years or so, and it's really hard to tell what she'll be like. Better, or worse.

YIKES! Now you scared me! Never thought that she could turn worse due maturing. But you are right, some of her characteristics I don't like could well turn more poignant when she grows up and finds herself. Till now I have just hoped she will grow out of some of her irritating behaviour.

But you are right, much of this is teen stuff and she is still just a teen. If they are still together five years from now, I will probably know quite different young woman than this girl. And at least she is not any chainsaw murder running around, so it could be worse. I guess.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Sorry, didn't mean to scare you.
I think what I was trying to say is that for some people, it really is just a maturity factor. For others... it will be a "real" problem, and it doesn't magically go away.
And there's people like me who really didn't even start getting some of it figured out until I was almost 30... and some if it is still a work in progress.

I'm going to guess, though, that your difficult child is going to definitely improve with maturity.

 

[DammitJanet]

Hopefully your difficult child will grow up and tire of this basically hanger on...or slightly better than a groupie.

 

[SuZir]

Yeah, I too hope that most likely thing happens and they break up sometime during the next two or three years. It is not that common that first serious relationship started when you are 18 would last. They may end up maturing in different schedule, they may end up bored with each others, just notice they are too different and not what they wanted or either one can fall in love with someone else or something else like that. It simply is not likely it would last and I'm happy with that.

Interfering is always a bad idea, especially bad mouthing a girlfriend to difficult child would be a serious mistake. I also don't think it would be wise to try to talk about my concerns with him in any nicer way. He would still consider it interfering and bad mouthing. There are still some things I itch to talk with him. Not so much regarding her current girlfriend but in more general way, but I'm not sure if that doesn't end up backfiring too. It's just that it is big issue with difficult child also outside of this relationship and I wonder if I would be able to talk about that without him thinking it is about girlfriend.

It's about how he lets people to treat him. He is very bad at protecting himself in appropriate way if it is someone close. Not that he is good at it when it is someone not close, then he tends to lash out if he can't run or hide. But with those close to him it is more of the problem, because running or hiding are often not options. He may lash out also those close to him but eventually he just lets people do whatever to him, is angry, blames himself and lashes then out passive-aggressive ways. Very unhealthy coping mechanisms. And if nothing helps, he submits and turns his anger to himself. I for example know that I could be very abusive to him and he would be totally helpless and unable to draw any boundaries. And it is not just me, but the group he would let to treat him badly is rather large and it is very possible that he will meat many people who will treat him badly or take advantage of him if he doesn't learn to protect himself. That vulnerability worries me a lot.

I also worry if me and husband have been modelling a good relationship for our sons. I very much believe in modelling in raising kids and I have tried to show them how relationships should work. We have tried to not have hissy fits at least in front of kids but tried to talk about or differences and fight fairly and also show our kids that we are able to take responsibility of our actions and feelings and apologise if we are in wrong and forgive and make up. To compromise and take other person's feelings in to the count and to do positive and nice things to each other. I'm not sure how successful we have been, but we have tried. It does bother me that difficult child doesn't seem to consider violence being a big deal. Not her girlfriend being violent towards him and earlier assuming his dad could had hit me during the fight (after easy child had called him and told me and husband were in odds.) Just not happy with that at all.

 

[DammitJanet]

Suzir, I agree with you on pretty much all counts. You could probably try to slip in some words of wisdom from time to time without him realizing what you are doing and that might help. I have had to do that with mine. It does help.

I also know without a shadow of a doubt that my boys seem to emulate the way they have seen our father's and my relationship. We never got married and we got together immediately after we met. They know this and they seem to think this is a normal thing and it works for most people. It doesnt. Their dad and I are the exception to the rule. Probably a one in a million chance of it working out for almost 30 years. They dont understand that because they see that we are still together but they dont understand all the hard work we put into it. They pretty much think it was easy. NOT!

 

[susiestar]

I am SOOOOOO thankful to not have to deal with this yet. Wiz refuses to let any of us meet any of his girlfriends. We likely won't until he is very very serious, as in ready to marry. Right now he is saying he will never marry and will never have kids. I doubt this will last. Some girl will get preg to catch him and while he may not marry her, he will be a good dad. It feels amazing to realize that I truly believe this! For quite a few years I lived in terror of him having a child because I did not know if he would be a good dad.

The whole picking out baby names makes me lol. Oddly, I didn't EVER do that, not even as a little girl when my friends were all planning their weddings and baby names. I did once decide to either be married on horseback or at the top of a roller coaster, but that was mostly to shock the other girls into shutting up because I found the whole mess of planning your wedding when you are six years old to be boring and nauseating. (I was even more nauseated wehn my childhood bff actually carried out many of the things she planned back then when seh actually got married. Six yo's have awful taste, lol!)

My brother is the ONLY guy I know who picked out his kids names when he was a kid. They were HIDEOUS, and i won't name them here, but i was thankful that the woman he had a chld with flat out said NO when he told her what they were. One of very few things that exsil did that I liked/approved of.

This thread reminds me of the only Dr. Laura show I ever saw. I only saw it because one of the kids had run off with the remote and I had either J or T napping on me and I didn't want to wake them by moving. None of my kids slept well enough to be moved during naptime. Dr. Laura told some young women that if your parents don't like the person you marry, don't marry them. Why? Because your parents are very invested in you and they want the best for you and if they truly don't like the person you marry, or think they are just wrong for you, then they have reasons and are probably right.

While I think this is good advice for MY kids, and my parents always liked husband, I cannot see many people following this. esp given how many parents I knwo think that NO ONE is good enough for their baby or that their kids should choose a spouse based on income, etc....

I don't think I could cope well with a son or daughter in law who wasn't a reader and wasn't really curous about lots of things. It would drive me nuts, but also would drive my kids nuts. I guess I will see when my kids get serious about dating, won't I?